Sunday 19th March 2011

Review of this concert by Philip Worth

This was a welcome return for the DSO to the centenary Theatre which, over the years, has surely become its power base. But this concert did not open with a fanfare, as might have been expected. Instead we were eased gently into the event with the strange and elusive tones of Prelude a l’Apres Midi d’Une Faune by Debussy. Strangely, this languorous and erotic music, with its shimmering semitones and subtle changes of tempi might have been composed yesterday rather than at the turn of the last century. Inspired by a poem by Stephane Mallarme its impact on modern musical thought has been huge just as, in parallel, has Impressionism been on pictorial art – another cultural gift from France! More, when we come to Berlioz.In a quieter, more restrained and classical mood we next came to Schumann’s Cello Concerto in A Minor. It was good that this piece had an outing because, in spite of its many fine things it has tended to be overshadowed by the twin peaks of Dvorak and Elgar and therefore not performed as often as it deserved. The orchestration has not always been too popular with ensemble players because it has been accused of being ‘thick’ or ‘dense’, criticisms which, in the light of the music’s other great glories, border on the irrelevant. We must remember that this concerto, like the mightyRhenish Symphony, was composed in 1850 when the composer was at the height of his powers and well before his descent into madness.Our soloist for this piece was Claire McConnell, herself a member of the DSO and a richly talented artist. If Claire is typical of the quality of DSO players, makes one wonder why we should import soloists from outside!Earlier, when discussing Debussy, I referred to the impact which French composers had made on the development of modern music. Chronologically Debussy, whose dates were 1862-1918, fits in with one’s idea of the ‘modern age’. The ‘Prelude’ was composed in 1903, a year which was already familiar with the motor car, the steam locomotive and the moving picture. But over seventy years before that, and a mere three years after the death of Beethoven, there occurred an event which shook the musical world to its foundations – the Symphonie Fantastique of Hector Berlioz. Manic, breaking a whole raft of rules and observing no classical model, bizarre in concept and execution and, above all, uncompromising in its imaginative power, music would never be the same again after it had burst upon the world. Never had music attempted to express moods and events so vividly. And what moods! What events! One moment we are subjected to drug-induced meditations in the countryside, at another we are being marched to the guillotine in triumph, then swept along in a hellish dance of demons on St. John’s Eve; and all this subtly linked by a haunting idée fixe(precursor of Wagner’s leitmotiv).To say that this extraordinary piece would challenge any ensemble is an understatement. DSO rose to the challenge with its customary verve and boldness.

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